Ali the Helering

Yeah, but Trump needs protection.  Desperately.  Truss doesn't even need salad dressing, unlike a lettuce.

After less than two months in office, Truss will receive the ex-Prime Minister's 'allowance' of £115,000 a year for life.  I'm afraid I don't know the dollar equivalent, I haven't checked the exchange rate in the last hour....

Yeah, despite the fact that some Tories thought her a Little Gem, eventually they saw reason, told her she couldn't Romaine in post and sent her off on a Rocket.😁

5 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

So sorry, hadn't logged your icon

Mind you, I'm not an axolotl😁

8 hours ago, Eff said:

Sister, actually. But yes.

So sorry, hadn't logged your icon

Halleluia brother!  I completely agree with you, which is why I do not agree with you.😇

Everything we deal with is a particular interpretation of Glorantha.  Only Greg was infallible.  

At least, until the next time we got Gregged.

Since the East didn't truly suffer the Darkness, even the Monomyth is a particular interpretation.  Or at least it once was.

Everything we work with is a particular interpretation of Glorantha.  Greg alone was infallible.  Until we got Gregged.

4 minutes ago, Eff said:

If they're able to recover, I'm reasonably sure that there's not really a narrative of decline in play, because things would only be able to get worse. And since they're able to recover without devastating other parts of the world, I'm more than "reasonably" sure. I'm completely sure that there, regardless of any intentions on the part of the authors, is not a narrative of decline in play, because improvement is possible. Just like decline is possible. 

I don't know who you're addressing with "narrative of progress" there, though. 

Decline is inevitable, because of the Devil's return.  'Improvement is possible' is a narrative of progress, and yet is overturned again and again.  Simply because the apocalypses (sp?) destroy tyrannies doesn't mean that they are anything other than ghastly massacres of innocents and disruptions of society and community interactions.

Nonetheless, the effects on society are devastating, and it takes the affected areas centuries to recover.  While a narrative of progress is nice, it doesn't bring the dead back.  Not even the Compromise achieved that, except for the privileged deities.

Glorantha is certainly post-apocalyptic, multiply so.  Fall of Yelm, fall of Mernita, Syndics Ban, Closing, Dragonkill, one could go on and on.  It is clearly written as a descent from a Golden Age. 

1 hour ago, Brian Duguid said:

I reckon there is one group of Arkati meeting across the street. And another group meeting upstairs in the Kafl Leaf Inn next door. And yet another in the house on the other side. Each keeping an eye out on Arkat's Rest for any visiting foes, and completely unaware of each other.

and each honouring a different Arkat...

22 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

Given there's a place called Arkat's Rest, w9ith a huge Arkat rune on it, in the west side of Nochet, it's not really all that secret ...

Ahh, but the genius of the Arkati is that they meet in the unwindowed house directly across the street!

There was a cult write-up in Troll Gods.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Very cool. I remember 1984: David Jenkins (the Bishop of Durham) and his comment on the resurrection as not “a conjuring trick with bones” and Cupitt’s Sea of Faith on TV. (Which kinda loops us back to old Ludwig, again.)

Every year Don would lead a group of philosophy and theology students to his graveside.  He said that it was very interesting that every year there were votive offerings placed there!

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

And yet we have the story: “What’s the Fourth Age like?”; Greg points out the window.

I tend now to see the myth of how Glorantha thins through successive cycles of destruction as an aetiology of our world. I wouldn’t want everyone to agree with me — how dull that would be! — but maybe one day one person?

Oh, and treating theistic magic like a science providing lots of shiny tech tools, didn’t someone try that? Remind me how that worked out for them.

Don Cupitt, the non-Realist theologian (and my ethics tutor) demanded of religion that there be "No more pixie dust".

I think he and Greg would have got on well.

While no longer of the pantheon, Heler would seem likely given his repeated fights with Ui and his Ereltharol aspect.

56 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Another interesting bit about the family history of elves is that since elves are so long lived, an elven PC might actually have been at some great event years ago, rather than (or in addition to) one or more ancestors. Elrond was at the battle 3000 years ago, where Sauron was struck down.

I have toyed with the idea of character creation along the lines of Nephilim, so that elves gain specific skills at different points within the ages, dependent on the culture and society predominating at the time, and any changes in focus for the character.  

13 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

My, my, Ali... that is quite the long detailed post... too much coffee?🙂

 

My consultant leaned forward very urgently, and with great intensity assured me "You can never have too much caffeine!"

I know some doctors survive on it, and I always try to follow medical advice😊

8 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

But, wouldn't they look really excited, because something has finally happened???

Yet, as players, haven't we all felt "Oh, not another f***ing quest against an f***ing Dark Lord"?

Of course, part of the issue with respect to Family Histories is that they record events that have a significant impact upon the PC.  It all depends on what you class as such a significant event.  The Clan Questionnaire made do with 32(?) questions to cover the entirety of Glorantha's myth and history impact on a clan. 

If you produce a Noldor Family History then you simply have to record the major events that would have impact on someone from their specific realm.  Remembering that for very long periods of time nothing happens that needs recording.  Which may be why so many elves look truly bored in the movies.😜

7 hours ago, Eff said:

Well, that and the the "serpents of the deep" or tannim, presumably cognate with other (frequently serpentine) watery monsters in neighboring mythologies, though Ltn/Lotan/Leviathan gets individualized in poetry. 

Sorry to be a pedant, but while the singular of "serpents of the deep" is tannin the plural is tanninim.  

Tannim has been translated a number of ways, including 'monster', 'dragon' and 'jackal'.  Such precision is what makes the Bible such a simple book to understand....

Just now, Bill the barbarian said:

A little Babylonian creation myth underlying the Talmudic creation myth. Cool. I know of a few other areas that the religions interact (Sargon/Moses, the floods) but that is just too cool. 

Since the excavation and translation of the Ugarit/Ras Shamra material the Bible has to be seen as part of a continuum of Mesopotamian-Levantine religious material.  Biblical literalists fail to take the Bible seriously.🤣🤪

38 minutes ago, Eff said:

Chaos in Glorantha really refers to a couple different things, out of universe. On one hand, there's the unformed or unsorted "existence before existence", the Kaos of Greek myth, the tehom of Genesis 2:2, the Ginnungagap of Snorri Sturluson, etc., which can also be translated as "void". On another hand, there's the transcendental "materialized ideology", the Chaos of Moorcock and Games Workshop, which is a kind of intangible or ethereal quality that causes icky mutations and typesetting that GoES LIke ThIs. On a third hand, there's the "moral tehom", Chaos as the source of evil in the world, which is Chaos as Poul Anderson used the term. 

It is also worth noting that tehom is cognate with Tiamet, and the portion of the Genesis 1 Creation narrative where 

6 And God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ 7 So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. 

can easily be understood as the splitting of the Chaos goddess in two, and the RW being created between those parts. This is directly referenced in the Enuma Elish Tablet IV verses 101 - 140.

2 hours ago, g33k said:

I still like the idea I met in 1981 -- the Lunars  themselves  caused it, trying to "consecrate" land that was, in fact, NOT "land" but "Dragon."

I suspect it's deliberately ambiguous in canon, so that YGMV and so that multiple stories can be simultaneously true.

I have always considered it to be an unintentional backfire of the ritual causing a sleeping dragon to awaken, indicating the Gloranthan Uncertainty Principle.

Is it a sleeping dragon; is it a range of hills; is it really, really angry at having its snooze interrupted?